Why is personalisation crucial to improving customer experience

Despite
being lauded as a best practice principle for years, personalisation is still
considered to be of low or no priority for a third of enterprise organisations,
according to the findings of a recent study we conducted in collaboration with
eConsultancy. However, with customers increasingly demanding more personalised
communications, brands need to ensure they are making effective use of their
data, and channelling it into their marketing activity in a meaningful and
considered way.

Personalisation is rooted in understanding and fulfilling the needs of your
customers. That might mean knowing where they are and when, and include
purchase or behavioural data. Alternatively, it might just be focused on
knowing whether or not they have consumed a single piece of content. Whatever
insights you are able to glean from your customers, you need to be able to
interpret it. If you do, it can be incredibly powerful in understanding who
they are and what they want. It also enables you to demonstrate to them that
you have listened to their needs and are acting upon them, within the
parameters that will excite them most.

Technological investment is
crucial to achieving this and to breaking down data silos across the
organisation, but for many businesses this is a real challenge. With the right
investment, personalisation can enable businesses to deliver customer
communications that are more effective and significantly enhance a customer’s
overall experience. A human workforce can only work to understand what these
clues mean. To ensure these insights are put to good use requires technology
that is able to help businesses act in the moment.

However, it is not just about
technology - that’s just the enabler. Businesses need to adapt their data
capture methods and their overall approach to digital marketing to truly reap
the benefits personalisation can bring. They also need to ensure they operate
in a far more proactive way and focus heavily on understanding and interpreting
user behaviour, not just demographic data. These behaviours, which reflect the
personality, aspirations and the ever-changing needs of customers, are critical
to gaining the detailed insight needed to ensure the campaigns are as targeted
as they possibly can be.

Whilst a lack of financial
resource makes this difficult to achieve - after all marketing departments are
becoming increasingly stretched as the requirement to operate in a multichannel
portfolio intensifies - the real obstacle is legacy, which is typically driven
by the IT department. The internal resources for managing key marketing assets
in the business are not determined by the marketers. As a result, most of them
are not fit for purpose. So it’s simply not the case that personalisation is
the preserve of huge corporations that can afford the best CRM.

Brands need to reorganise
their marketing departments around the experiences of their customers. Where
are these customers? What are the big moments in their life journey? Do you
have a 360 degree view of when these are, and how important they are to your
customers? These questions are becoming increasingly important when shaping how
brands use their customer data to greater effect, especially when improving
customer experience.

According to our study,
marketers are aware of the benefits. In fact 47% of respondents cited improved
customer experience as the primary benefit of personalised campaigns. Yet many
are still unable to truly harness the potential their data holds. A customer-focused view of marketing sounds
simple in principle, but when most media channels operate independently,
uniting them together takes time. Even when you’ve done that, the benefits of
personalised campaigns are hard to measure instantly. At their core they are
designed to nurture an audience. For marketers, proving they can make a big
difference to the bottom line and that they’re not just nice to have, can be
more of an obstacle in some organisations.

In many respects, marketing
companies need to gain greater control of all aspects of the marketing function
and, where that is not possible, ensure that the marketing and IT function are
fully integrated together. Data is, in many respects, the glue that binds the
two departments together so being able to access, interpret and then utilise it
is vital.

The trouble is even at the
enterprise level, companies are struggling to integrate their data sources in a
manner which will strengthen their operations. In fact, fewer still have been
able to extend the benefits of data outside of promotional marketing in
research, customer service or product development. So it is incumbent on
marketers to make sure that they establish a seamless, joined up experience,
where no one channel is competing with another.

But
what approach do you take?

Lots of people often get
confused between whether to invest in segmentation or personalisation, but in
actual fact they both work in tandem with each other.

For travel brands,
segmentation is a valuable tool for identifying different customer sets. It can
help you identify particular customer sets with a specific need. In this case
customers may start with a similar vision or need - some may be interested in
flying to Spain for a summer holiday, whilst others may simply want to take a
short city break - but as they move further along in the process, these needs
will become far more specific. Some may need to book specific activities for
their children, others might be interested in adult-only hotels. Both of these
customers will follow a particular lifecycle, but marketers can’t afford to
think about this as a transactional journey. They need to understand the
mind-set and environment they are in.

Personalisation provides that
additional step, but it has to be done correctly. Just because they browsed
holidays in Spain on your site today, it doesn’t mean they still want to hear
about them in two months’ time – especially if they are about to board a plane
on their way to their sunny week away. You have to fully understand what your
customers’ intentions are, analyse past behaviour and then predict what they
want before they request it, or if nothing else, from the moment they interact
with you.

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